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"The Most Un-American Speech I've Ever Heard"
Thu Jan 27, 2005 17:30
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"The Most Un-American Speech I've Ever Heard"
GORE VIDAL: Or be honest about them. The famous February, a year ago, when everybody demonstrated. I spoke to 100,000 people in Hollywood Boulevard. And the L.A. Times, which is better than most of the establishment papers, said there's just hardly anybody there. However, they were undone by the photograph taken of -- when I was up on the platform at very end of Hollywood Boulevard with La Brea in back of me and way up ahead Vine Street, you saw 100,000 people. You saw what they looked like, unlike New York where they got everybody into side streets so you couldn't see them at all in a photograph, because they just didn't show up. So, out here, a makeup man at the Times helped the cause.
AMY GOODMAN: As the Democratic Party chooses a new leader, do you have words of advice for the direction?
GORE VIDAL: Remember that the United States -- the people of the country have always been isolationists, a word which has been demonized, thrown out, an isolationist is somebody who believes in a flat earth and is racist and so forth and so on. Well, none of that is true. Isolationists -- Most of the left in the second world war, from Norman Thomas on to Burton K. Wheeler, were progressive Americans, the very best liberal Americans were anti-war. We have never been for imperial foreign wars. We have to be dragged screaming into them, as we were after Pearl Harbor and there was a lot of machinations going on to make sure that that happened. And it goes on all the time. Events are made so horrible people like Saddam and so on are demonized, and we all have to immediately begin by saying how awful he is for 25 minutes before we can get down to the fact that he was no threat to the United States, no threat at all. He was not involved with al Qaeda. He was not involved with 9/11. He was not. He was not. You can say it a million times, but there you have a president with the help of the most corrupt media in my lifetime bouying his words across the land and telling lies about the – ‘We're 45 minutes away from being blown up by the weapons of mass destruction that this master of evil has in his hands.’ To which the answer is: Why? Why would he do that? There must be some motivation. You see, they are now beyond motivation, and that is insanity. So, an insane government is not one that you can look to with any confidence.
AMY GOODMAN: Gore Vidal, speaking to us from California. His latest book, Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia.
To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, click here for our new online ordering or call 1 (800) 881-2359.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/25/1458238
GORE VIDAL: Or be honest about them. The famous February, a year ago, when everybody demonstrated. I spoke to 100,000 people in Hollywood Boulevard. And the L.A. Times, which is better than most of the establishment papers, said there's just hardly anybody there. However, they were undone by the photograph taken of -- when I was up on the platform at very end of Hollywood Boulevard with La Brea in back of me and way up ahead Vine Street, you saw 100,000 people. You saw what they looked like, unlike New York where they got everybody into side streets so you couldn't see them at all in a photograph, because they just didn't show up. So, out here, a makeup man at the Times helped the cause.
AMY GOODMAN: As the Democratic Party chooses a new leader, do you have words of advice for the direction?
GORE VIDAL: Remember that the United States -- the people of the country have always been isolationists, a word which has been demonized, thrown out, an isolationist is somebody who believes in a flat earth and is racist and so forth and so on. Well, none of that is true. Isolationists -- Most of the left in the second world war, from Norman Thomas on to Burton K. Wheeler, were progressive Americans, the very best liberal Americans were anti-war. We have never been for imperial foreign wars. We have to be dragged screaming into them, as we were after Pearl Harbor and there was a lot of machinations going on to make sure that that happened. And it goes on all the time. Events are made so horrible people like Saddam and so on are demonized, and we all have to immediately begin by saying how awful he is for 25 minutes before we can get down to the fact that he was no threat to the United States, no threat at all. He was not involved with al Qaeda. He was not involved with 9/11. He was not. He was not. You can say it a million times, but there you have a president with the help of the most corrupt media in my lifetime bouying his words across the land and telling lies about the – ‘We're 45 minutes away from being blown up by the weapons of mass destruction that this master of evil has in his hands.’ To which the answer is: Why? Why would he do that? There must be some motivation. You see, they are now beyond motivation, and that is insanity. So, an insane government is not one that you can look to with any confidence.
AMY GOODMAN: Gore Vidal, speaking to us from California. His latest book, Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia.
To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, click here for our new online ordering or call 1 (800) 881-2359.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/25/1458238
- "GOVERNMENT OF, FOR, AND BY THE PEOPLE" —Don Barletta, Thu Jan 27 23:42
- Corperations are not the problem-Jews running them are! —Zappa, Fri Jan 28 11:09
- Of the People...... —Tired of the Noise, Fri Jan 28 10:31
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